Navigating the Valley of Death: Perceptions of Industry and Academia on Production Platforms and Opportunities

Abstract

AbstractRational lifestyle engineering using computational methods and synthetic biology has made it possible to genetically improve industrial performance of microbial cell factories for the production of a range of biobased chemicals. However, only an estimated 1 in 5,000 to 10,000 innovations make it through the Valley of Death to market implementation.To gain in-depth insights into the views of industry and academia on key bottlenecks and opportunities to reach market implementation, a qualitative and exploratory study was performed by conducting 12 in depth interviews with 8 industrial and 4 academic participants. The characteristics that any cell factory must have were schematically listed, and commonly recognised opportunities were identified.We found that academics are limited by only technical factors in their research, while industry is restricted in their research choices and flexibility by a series of technical, sector dependent and social factors. This leads to a misalignment of interest of academics and funding industrial partners, often resulting in miscommunication. Although both are of the opinion that academia must perform curiosity-driven research to find innovative solutions, there is a certain pressure to aim for short-term industrial applications. All these factors add up to the Valley of Death; the gap between development and market implementation.A third party, in the form of start-up companies, could be the answer to bridging the Valley of Death.